Reflections from the Retreat…

Breathe & Belong

                When I first began imagining this retreat, my thoughts kept returning to breath—how it connects us, how it sustains us, and how its role in our lives shifted dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Breath is essential to everything we do as musicians.

We make sound through our breath.

We coordinate our breath in ensembles.

We use it to communicate emotion, energy, and intention.

And of course, it is vital to life itself.

                The pandemic interrupted that flow. Breathing together—something once so natural—suddenly became dangerous. We covered our faces. We kept our distance. We went without touch, song, and shared resonance in safe spaces. For many of us, the silence in our rehearsal and performance spaces was deafening. Performing may have been the most comfortable, authentic way we expressed ourselves—and for me, it was the first time I’d been silent since I began performing at the age of five.

                As we emerged from quarantine, we were different. Each of us changed in our own way. Our sense of safety, our ways of greeting and sharing space, everything had shifted. We had to relearn what it meant to be in community with one another.

                Breathing with a mask was strange. Speaking, singing, playing wind instruments—all became complicated. Fatiguing. For many, deeply unsettling. We struggled in body and spirit. And even now, with masks off, the question lingers: Is it really safe?

                We pause at the threshold of a hug. We hold our breath around friends and family. Our breathing rhythms—once intuitive—have been disrupted.

                Breath. Heartbeat. Nerve impulse. It’s a kind of chicken-or-egg mystery: Which comes first? Which follows? What we do know is this—the diaphragm, the primary muscle of respiration, moves the lungs and ribs to make breathing possible. The heart then carries that breath, that oxygen, throughout the body. Breath sets the rhythm of the nervous system, shaping and reflecting our internal state. One influences the other. One reveals the other. But which is which? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe what matters is that we begin to listen again. To notice. To come back into rhythm with ourselves—and with each other.

Because here’s the paradox:

Balance, breath, and presence are not things we perform.

They are not skills to be perfected or achievements to be earned.

They are emergent properties of a regulated nervous system.

They arise naturally when we feel safe, when we feel like we belong.

And this is where it becomes confusing for many of us, especially musicians and educators.

                Yes, we can use breath, posture, and attention to regulate ourselves. These are powerful tools. But regulation is not something we impose. When left alone, when we feel safe enough, supported enough, seen enough, the body knows how to regulate itself. Our natural rhythms emerge. Breath finds its own way. Balance returns. Presence becomes possible again.

That’s what I wanted to explore together. Not how to perform calmness, or force balance, or fix our breathing—But how to listen. How to feel. How to allow the conditions for emergence.

                We worked together, honing our hands-on skills as Alexander teachers. We enjoyed meals and music together, venturing down into town to listen to the Seattle Symphony. We walked together through the vast natural beauty of the Cascade Mountains.  Together, we worked to arrive in our bodies and calm our nervous system so that we could listen again to the rhythm of our breath. We rebuilt our community, which had come together in Nashville last September.

                At one point, before we went into the woods, I posed the question: “Why do we choose tension over freedom in our bodies?”  That was what we were to ponder on our hike along the Middle Fork River.  I never expected the outcome.

                As we recollected in the retreat house and began to share our thoughts, one individual, who is in their third year of study, said:

“As I was thinking about this, I realized that I had to begin to see the world without preconceived judgments. I then realized that to do that, I had to see myself without judgment. That was really hard and scary.”

I responded with:

“How can we begin to feel safe in spaces when the thing, the person we are most afraid of, is ourselves? We can cultivate practices of wellness, gratitude, and compassion for others, but doing the same for ourselves is often challenging. It requires that we accept and believe that we are worthy and enough. And when we say that to ourselves, we must mean it!”

We had to balance the heart, literally and figuratively. We spent time grounding in heaven and earth, securing our dignity. We then opened our hearts back into the unmanifest, connecting to source, the heart of the divine, fortifying our safety. Then we balanced the energy of the heart between inclusion and discernment, reaffirming that we belong first to ourselves, which gives us the clarity to see what is ours in this world and what is not. This meditation, through breathing and presence, allowed our nervous systems to shift from a state of survival to one of rest.

It was a beautiful experience for me.  I am grateful to all those who attended and contributed to the learning experience we shared.